


If Thou Wilt Chide, Thy Lips Shall Never Open

by CalamityCain



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Coercion, Consent Issues, Corsetry, Crying, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Feminization, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Manipulative Relationship, Physical Abuse, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:26:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22067740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCain/pseuds/CalamityCain
Summary: Lucille reflects on the increasingly codependent relationship suffocating both her and her beloved brother, unable to undo all that she has done, unable to let him go.
Relationships: Lucille Sharpe/Thomas Sharpe
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	If Thou Wilt Chide, Thy Lips Shall Never Open

Bodies wrapped in secrets and silk, rustling with stories like the dead leaves of coming winter. That is what we are. That is all we are to these decadent butterflies. We come and go as moths, as ghosts. Teach me how to sing, pretty-faced larks, warbling by the lake in pretty colours. For now I shall sit here and play a desolate tune on the piano. Black against white. My heart against his.

He stares out the window in the manner of a poet-philosopher: alabaster, exquisite, the fragility of china in a waistcoat. It is as unfashionable as everything he wears, yet suits him perfectly. Old clothes cling and fall like new ones never do. The softness is familiar. When we hold each other, we are reminded of our penury and our downfall from old wealth. Graceful, yes, as a Shakespearean tragedy is graceful. But who would not rather be the audience than the tale?

“ ‘Thrice-fairer than myself,’ thus she began,” I recite. He turns his head toward me just as the sunset falls on the lovely bones of his face. I continue:

“The field's chief flower, sweet above compare,  
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man.   
More white and red than doves or roses are,  
Nature that made thee, with herself at strife  
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.”

“And what would Adonis want with Venus when you stand before him?” he says with a shy smile. It always begins shyly, as if the weight of sadness prevents him from the careless grin of one less burdened. With his flawless elocution he whispers:

“And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety  
But rather famish them amid their plenty,

Making them red and pale with fresh variety:  
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.”

Such poetry, merely to ask for a kiss. Of course I oblige. Ten kisses, and then twenty. It is all too easy to spend an hour doing nothing but losing oneself in the sweetness of the softness I have taken such pains to preserve.

In the heat of need, I push him against the wall. The quiver of his lips makes me all the more demanding. I have difficulty ceasing my demands once they start to shatter down the door. It is a malaise of a childhood of restraint, of holding your breath in your chest so that it flutters ever so quietly and does not wake the wrath of a forbidding father or temperamental mother. Either one might bring the birch down on us, or the steel tip of a walking stick. When that happens, I cover Thomas’ body with mine and shield him from the blows. He is too perfect and too beautiful and I am stronger than him. I always have been.

When it is all over, he is the one with the tear-stained face, shaking all over, spilling regret onto my shoulder. I cradle him close even as my welts and bruises scream bloody murder. I regret nothing.

~

Although we had nurses and sitters aplenty – each coming and going with the storms of Mother’s temper – I was the one who tucked him in at night and bathed him and combed his hair. Like any girl of privilege, I had my share of dolls, some of which cost a pretty penny. But none of them awoke any nurturing instinct the way such toys are supposed to. They were lovely; I played with them; I dressed them up to my liking and then put them back in their boxes. Thomas, my perfect little brother, was far above the most exquisitely made doll. I loved his weight on my lap and against my chest as we read bedtime stories to each other. I loved the smell of his soft dark hair that I took pains to form into waves with paper curlers the night before we were to be presented as model children. The kind who is seen and never heard.

Downstairs, the dinner party is just beginning, but we will not be expected for at least another half an hour. I tie velvet bows of crimson into my hair. It is the last year I will wear these girlish ponytails. By the next I will be a proper young lady, expected to master a dignified updo according to the fashion of the times.

“The blue one,” I say when he holds up two different vests. “It is cut better, and shows off your figure.”

“You know I’m not fond of showing off.”

“Yes, you would rather skulk in the shadows. You won’t be a child forever, Tom. Sooner or later the world must know what an accomplished young man you are. You will be a great scholar, a craftsman who makes things of beauty.”

I button him into his clothes. The small act makes him feel protected when he is nervous, which is why I continued to dress him well past the age where he was capable of doing it himself.

Then I give his hair one last brush, admiring how its lustre outshines mine. As he grew up it would become naturally wavy. Like everything he did, full of grace. His movements were a waltz; his fine figure slender and upright. Some little boys never outgrow the rough-and-tumble phase of boyhood when they become men – they retain a certain coarseness in their walk and in their turn of phrase, even when cloaked in an air of gentility. My sheltered Thomas was a shining Ganymede next to these ruffians in dress coats. By merely willing it, each word shaped by his lips was a pearl in a string of poetry. His tapering fingers that Father scorned for being “soft, like a girl’s” coaxed intricate clockwork creations out of the coarsest wood. Every year for my birthday he would make me something. As soon as I smiled with joy, he would too; in that moment we became a complete mirror of each other. Dark-haired children, dark inside with sorrow, except in such moments that ended with our lips meeting and parting as if to exchange the secrets we shared with no one else.

When we were old enough to sleep in separate rooms, we dutifully did so. Knowing that when the clock hand crept past midnight he would find his way into my bed, or me into his. My heart lightened when I heard the creaking of my door. I said into the intimate dark:

"Over one arm the lusty courser's rein;  
Under her other was the tender boy  
Who blushed and pouted in a dull disdain."

His eyes lit up at the favourite poem committed to memory after he had been gifted a book of sonnets for his eleventh birthday. He had been too young then, of course, to understand the erotic overtones of Venus toying with Adonis.

“With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;  
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire  
He red for shame, but frosty in desire.”

If at first he was indeed frosty out of naivete, of ignorance, he soon blossomed into a warm and giving being who denied me nothing. The beautiful, unmarked body I had shielded with my own belonged to me as much as it did to him. There was not an inch of him I did not lay claim to. I knew how to make him gasp, or whimper with want, or cry. I knew how to hurt with words in place of bruises. Pain and love are intertwined. You cannot have roses without the thorns.

“Now doth she stroke his cheek,” I sigh.

“Now doth he frown,  
And begins to chide, but soon she stops his lips;   
And kissing, speaks with lustful language broken:  
'If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.' ”

He is sublimely lovely when he cries. When his flushed cheeks and glassy eyes and quiet sobs began to crack my hardened heart, I find myself becoming tender and motherly, cradling his head to my breast until the heaving chest calms and the hot tears no longer soak into my nightgown. And then I kiss him and put him to bed, or let him fall asleep in my arms. My perfect little doll. 

_He burns with bashful shame; she with her tears  
Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks._

In the imaginary world we had built for ourselves, he stays this way forever: incorruptible and pure, mine alone to hold. In this secret world, no one else will slide a thumb between his rose-petal lips and into the wet warmth beyond, or touch the insides of his milk-white thighs, or turn his blue eyes bright with tears and then kiss those tears away.

~

As he reached full manhood, I developed a love for dressing him in my clothes. I adore how the snug garment looks against his skin, his flawless form, pulling a corset too tight around his slim waist. He begs me to stop as he gasps for breath, and I keep him laced in until his lashes flutter and all the colour in his whitened face is concentrated in his nose and cheekbones. When he starts to hyperventilate, I press my open lips to his to catch each sweet, hot little breath.

His first time was perhaps the most uncomfortable while simultaneously being the most thrilling – as most thrilling things in life are. Dizzy as he was, he remained standing long enough to look in the mirror. Admiring himself like Narcissus in the pond, staring as I did at the small pink nipples rising above the trim. I kissed his shoulder and ran my hands down the boning that curved gently down his streamlined torso. “You would be the envy of any lady,” I whispered, “if they could see you like this.”

I always know when to stop, of course. I have laced myself to the point of fainting before, just to become familiar with the workings of a body constrained to an extreme. Corsetry in moderation is perfectly harmless. Although I admit that my experimentations border on the mildly hazardous. Once in a while, I make him wear one beneath his men’s clothing, ensuring it is just tight enough that he is in danger of swooning beneath a strong sun or after the sort of vigorous activity reserved unfairly for those of the masculine persuasion.

Being delicate of health from birth, this surprised no one. When one sultry afternoon he alighted from his horse and promptly keeled over, his comrades carried him into the shade where I tended to him with dampened towels, a glass of chilled water on standby. No one ever thought to remove enough of his clothing to reveal the prison of silk and whalebone beneath. Yet another of our secrets wrapped in decorum, in civility.

Only once safe from prying eyes did I slide my hand beneath his unbuttoned shirt to caress the tightly bound laces and the embroidered edges. As he slowly regained consciousness, I leaned in to savour the melodic murmuring and the fragile beauty of his fading delirium.

“Lucy.” He calls me that only when we are alone; to the outside world, it is always Lucille. “Lucy, I can’t breathe. Please…may I…?”

He knew he was not to take it off without permission. I think a part of him enjoyed it. To wear something of mine, something that smells of my perfume, so close to his flesh. I see him flush with pleasure when I wrap it around his waist and begin to ensconce him in its strangely satisfying grip. But pleasure is not without its sacrifices; us ladies know that. For now, I acquiesced by loosening the cords until he exhaled with relief. I helped him sit up and wipe his sweat-dampened face with a cool damp towel. Then, against his protest, I buttoned him back up to hide the edge of the corset.

“The heat is killing me,” he confided.

“Drink,” I replied, pressing the rim of the ice-cool glass to his lips. He gulped down the water gratefully, unaware that a pleasant squeeze of lemon disguised the sedative dissolved within. It was not enough not knock him out, but merely render him pliant and receptive to…well, I am loathe to use the word ‘manipulation’. But one does what one must – and my well-being, I was terribly aware, depended on keeping him close to me, reliant on me.

Philip, his old classmate and regular riding companion, approached with a look of concern. Beside me, Thomas was slipping into a drugged torpor. “Is he alright?”

I smiled the smile of a doting sister. “He’ll be fine. I think he should lie down for a bit.”

“Does he need a doctor?”

“No, no. It’s happened before…last summer’s heat was even worse, and he had a fainting spell after a long walk by the lake.”

“Dear God. Well, then. Come on old chap.” He slid an arm beneath Thomas’ and helped him inside where we took off his boots and laid him on the couch. I waited until Philip had rejoined the other lads before pressing my fingers to the temptingly parted lips. He leaned instinctively into my touch, nuzzling my palm like a kitten nuzzles its mother. “You’ll be alright,” I whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”

“You’re so good to me,” he mumbled as he slipped in and out of his stupor. “You always are.”

~

I freely admit to my envy of a man’s freedom to go out into the world and taste the pleasures forbidden to a woman who is not a prostitute or a peasant. And he knows it. He knows of my pains when we are parted too long.

My neuroses, untreated and neglected by myself as much as my family, have worsened with age. There are moments I teeter on the brink of rationality to look into the abyss beyond. And how my dear Thomas has suffered to preserve my sanity. Never will he forget the stormy summer night I repaid his long absence – not just of himself, but the letters he had promised and never written – by tying him to the bed with my scarves, gagging him with one for good measure. His cries effectively stifled, I beat him as I had never done before. Some demonic force possesses me as I rained down blow after blow, horrified at the way he struggles in raw fear and wails like a child, yet unable to stop until the demon left me exhausted by the fading hurricane of my rage.

My senses returned, I undid with trembling hands the knot securing the thick scarf between his teeth. He shivered and sobbed, half-hysterical and, as always, not daring to cry too loudly. “Lucy…Lucy.” He could say nothing but my name for the next half hour. Like a prayer for mercy to a terrible goddess.

I untied him and dropped my head into his lap, begging forgiveness. I wept while kissing the bruises I left on his ribs and thighs. Thomas remained white-faced and silent as his fingers brushed my hair and we held each other tight. I think he was reminded of our parents’ brutality, reliving vivid moments from our tender years, perhaps seeing Mother’s madness in my eyes as I lashed out at him.

It is one of the few unforgivable things I have done. Yet he forgave me freely, and has never held a grudge against me for it, saints bless him. Surely I must have done something right in my blighted life to preserve such goodness, such pureness of heart.

Would I have treated him so if he were my sister instead? Perhaps; and perhaps not. I cannot imagine anyone else, male or female, in his place. My Thomas and I are bound inextricably, like vines, by the shadows of our shared history. Ours is a love grown from twisted, malformed seeds that defied death and the absence of sun. Ours are roots that grow so deep, to pull them out would bring agony. Poisonous, yes, but nothing sweet can grow in such hard and tainted soil.

But who can see what grows beneath the surface of our tainted devotion? In the aftermath of our embrace our fingers intertwine. The setting sun is reflected in the blood-red ruby on my finger. Ornate, antique silver, the only inheritance left from our venomous mother. The ring meant for Thomas’ future wife. He may marry another, but he knows who he truly belongs to.

Three wives now have walked down the aisle with him. But they know nothing of true sacrifice, these enviably bright-eyed women. I would walk through fire and ice for him. I would murder for him. I _have_ murdered for him.

And in return, he refuses me nothing.

_Forced to content, but never to obey,_   
_Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face_   
_She feedeth on the steam, as on a prey_   
_And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace;_   
_Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man._   
_Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers_   
_So they were dewed with such distilling showers._

_Look! how a bird lies tangled in a net,  
So_ _fastened in her arms Adonis lies._

*

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the sonnet 'Venus And Adonis'. The full line, “And kissing speaks with lustful language broken: If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open” is taken to mean that Venus stops Adonis from speaking by covering his lips with kisses. A metaphor for possessive love, if you will.
> 
> For the interpretation of the full poem: http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/venus


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